Masthead CMC Magazine / April 1, 1996
 The Senate's New Online Majority, Part II, by Chris Casey

How to Access United States Congressional Web Information

The URLs for home pages maintained by Members of the House of Representatives generally follow the same formula:

http://www.house.gov/lastname/welcome.html

(in cases where more than one Representative shares the same last name, the directory is:

http://www.house.gov/firstnamelastname/welcome.html)

For example, the home page maintained by Representative John Spratt of South Carolina's 5th Congressional District is found at:

http://www.house.gov/spratt/welcome.html

A generic directory home page exists on the House Web server for every Representative. The URLs for these generic pages follow the formula:

http://www.house.gov/mbr_dir/STATEDISTRICT.html

So the directory page for Rep. Spratt would be found at:

http://www.house.gov/mbr_dir/SC05.html

URLs can also determine the difference between genuine and generic home pages in the Senate. Generally, the URLs for home pages developed by Senators themselves follow the formula:

http://www.senate.gov/~lastname

Generic home pages created by the Senate Computer Center for those Senators who have not yet put themselves on the Web are revealed by a URL that delivers you to another directory in which all the generic pages are kept and appears as:

http://www.senate.gov/senator/lastname.html

Only a handful of home pages for members of Congress are found at URLs that don't follow these formulas. This is the case for those members who maintain home pages on Internet sites other than the House and Senate servers. Senator Kennedy's home page, for example, remains at MIT where it has been since long before the Senate had a Web site. Similarly, the home page for a member of the House, Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon, continues to be hosted by a Web server at the University of Oregon. ^


CMC Magazine Index
Contents Archive Sponsors Studies Contact